People, places, technology, and such

Through one of the photography groups I participate in, I discovered this discussion about the good and evils of Flickr, amateur vs. professional photographers, and the supposed drop of quality caused by the access of the masses to digital photography technology. This is, in some sense, another example on the controversy around collective creation that I referred to in a previous pots.

But what I found more interesting (and disturbing…) is how some of the arguments, specially those ones about the concept of Good Enough Quality Syndrome,  looked so similar to what Ortega y Gasset had written down around 80 years ago in his book The Revolt of teh Masses:

There is one fact which, whether for good or ill, is of utmost importance in the public life of Europe at its present moment. The fact is the accession of the masses to complete social power.

(…)

The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select.

I have never liked much Ortega’s ideas and books; one of the main reasons is that I had to read and study several of them for my high school history and philosophy classes (that’s what happens when your culture has very few modern philosophers, you always end up having to read the same ones…); and I do not think he is right on most of the pessimistic predictions he included in The Revolt of the Masses.

However, it is a good food for thought to think how some of the advances in communication and information technologies, and new applications such as social network sites, have an effect on the concept oft the masses that Ortega described so negatively in the 30s (remember, that was the decade of the Great Depression, the rise of fascist movements,…), and how his ideas may be an interesting counterpoint to the Smart Mobs theory (but then, of course, Smart Mobs has its own web site, and Revolt of the Masses just a short entry in wikipedia…)

Maybe it’s time to dust my old Ortega’s books, and read them again…

An interesting article about the effect (or non-effect) of globalization on poverty and inequality in China and India.

A couple of quotes that specially attracted my attention (emphasis is mine…):

In any case it is often statistically difficult to disentangle the effects of globalization from those of the ongoing forces of skill-biased technical progress, as with computers; structural and demographic changes; and macroeconomic policies.

(…)

Much of the extreme poverty was concentrated in rural areas, and its large decline in the first half of the 1980s is perhaps mainly a result of the spurt in agricultural growth following de-collectivization, egalitarian land reform and readjustment of farm procurement prices – mostly internal factors that had little to do with global integration.

(…)

Issues like globalization, inequality, poverty and social discontent are thus much more complicated than are allowed in the standard accounts about China and India.

The article is quite short, and, although it points some inconsistencies in the standard accounts about China and India, it does not provide any alternative explanation for phenomenons such as the rise in inequality indicators and its relation with globalization.

The point I found more intriguing, however, is the mention of the effects of skill-biased technical progres. In the traditional development accounts, technical progress is always associated to positive effects, but as the author hints, it is possible that technical progress (or some kind of technical progress…) also has a negative effect on equality, since the access to technology and its advantages may be limited by its cost and/or required skills to use it.

There are many efforts to use technology as tool to trigger economic and social progress in the more disadvantaged groups, but I wonder how many of them are really succesful and what are their effect on poverty and inequality indicators…

POST UPDATE: after writing this post, I found a paper about the increasing social fragmentation and inequality in Bangalore. I have not had time to read it in full detail, but the author seems to favor the thesis that globalization increases inequality:

Bangalore’s meteoric rise to a globally integrated location of modern service industries reflects the recent trends of economic globalisation. (…) Its integration into the highly competitive framework of inter-city linkages produces profound processes of urban restructuring creating new disparities and a highly fragmented and polarised urban society. Bangalore is becoming what is called a multiply divided city where both social and geographical barriers are reinforced.

I was checking some locations on the Indian Yahoo Maps web site, and I realized that they have implemented landmark based directions.

For those that have never visited India, the concept may need some explanation: in Indian cities street names are almost useless: only some of the main roads have recognizable names, and even in those cases there are no signs displaying those names. Smaller streets do not have names, or if they have them, usually add to the confusion (there are whole neighborhoods full of numbered main and cross streets that do not seem to follow any predetermined pattern). If you add the fact that building numbers are almost inexistent, it is almost impossible to find a place only with the street name and number.

The solution is a landmark based address system. Basically, when you give somebody directions on how to get to some place, they are based on a series of landmarks, usually well known building, such as temples, official buildings, shopping centers, or any other specific street features that stand out. Any address is useless unless it includes the corresponding set of landmarks.

The consequence is that the mapping and directions applications that had been developed with the more regular American or European street systems in mind were useless for Indian cities, and they had to adapt to the specifics of Indian street systems and support landmarks. Yahoo Maps implementation is not perfect: it provides landmarks when giving directions from one place to another, but it does not allow you to include a landmark in an address (at least it has not worked for me…); but, with all its limitations, it is a step forward to adapt mapping and GIS systems to local needs

On one side, this is a clear example on how technological solutions have to adapt to local specific conditions, but this development also opens questions about the influence of technology on habits and attitudes: as GPS navigation, mapping software, and related technologies become more popular in countries such as India, will hey change the way addresses and directions are given?, does the inclusion of certain landmarks in a system such as Yahoo Maps say something about the relevance of that specific building?, who determines that a certain building and or site is a landmark?.

I can imagine, in the future, corporations, shopping malls, and other commercial sites paying for the inclusion of their corresponding locations as landmarks, and if that becomes a source of revenue for this type of services, is it possible that landmark based systems are also implemented in mapping services for other places?, and would that change the way we think and model our cities?…